


Stay With Me

by Cobrilee



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, But that goes out the window in the first few paragraphs, Canon compliant to start, It's a season four finale rewrite, M/M, No Malia though, You know who it is, temporary mcd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 14:10:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12936945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cobrilee/pseuds/Cobrilee
Summary: It’s one of those moments that freezes in time. Sound dwindles to nothing, the breath freezes in his lungs, and there’s nothing except the man in front of him. Dying.“Go.”There’s blood at the corner of his mouth, pain in his eyes. Nothing unusual. His breathing is labored, and Stiles can feel every gasp for breath like it’s his own; chest tight, lungs aching, blood rushing through his ears. Stiles finds himself taking a step forward, and he sees when Derek recognizes the action for what it is.“Go!”“No.”The word is out of his mouth before he knows he’s going to say it, but there’s strength behind it. “No,” he repeats, and his voice is stronger, and he takes another step forward. And another. And as many as it takes to find himself at Derek’s side.---AKA, the season four finale rewrite that's been in my brain for ages. Here. Enjoy. (Grab tissues.)





	Stay With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you as always to the amazing and wonderful [mad-madam-m](https://mad-madam-m.tumblr.com/), and this time a huge thank you to [ajeepandleather](https://ajeepandleather.tumblr.com/) as well, for your invaluable advice.

It’s one of those moments that freezes in time. Sound dwindles to nothing, the breath freezes in his lungs, and there’s nothing except the man in front of him. Dying.

“Go.”

There’s blood at the corner of his mouth, pain in his eyes. Nothing unusual. His breathing is labored, and Stiles can feel every gasp for breath like it’s his own; chest tight, lungs aching, blood rushing through his ears. Stiles finds himself taking a step forward, and he sees when Derek recognizes the action for what it is.

“Go!”

“No.”

The word is out of his mouth before he knows he’s going to say it, but there’s strength behind it. “No,” he repeats, and his voice is stronger, and he takes another step forward. And another. And as many as it takes to find himself at Derek’s side. Vaguely he registers Braeden’s presence, but he ignores her as much as he can. “I’m not leaving you, Derek. You can’t make me go.”

Derek coughs, and Stiles’ eyes remain steady on his as blood bubbles up over his lips. “Stiles, don’t be an idiot. Scott needs you more than I do.”

“Please,” he scoffs. “You know there’s nothing I can do to help him. At least here, with you…”  _ I can stay with you until you’re gone. _ He doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t have to.

Derek maintains eye contact with him for a long moment. “Braeden.” She leans in, and Stiles has to force himself not to lean away. “Go with them. They’re going to need you.”

She frowns, but doesn’t fight him. Stiles can see how her hand tightens around Derek’s shoulder as she rises, and how her eyes harden as she flicks a gaze at Stiles himself. “Take care of him.” The words are stern but her voice quivers underneath them, and he understands her fear more than he cares to acknowledge. 

“I will.” Stiles swallows, praying that he’s not lying.

Silence falls as she strides away to catch up with the others; for the first time in a long time, Stiles has no words. He sits beside Derek, helpless to fight the panic and the fear that he’s losing someone precious to him, despite the fact that he never allowed himself to understand how precious Derek was.  _ Is _ . 

“Thank you for staying.” Derek’s voice is thready, and Stiles’ heart lurches. “Even though you should have gone after Scott.”

Stiles leans into Derek, his hip pressed against Derek’s side, and he tentatively settles his arm around Derek’s shoulders. He chalks it up to Derek being too exhausted to fight it, but he can’t deny the warmth spreading through him as Derek curls into the embrace. “C’mon, Der. I can’t do anything for Scott right now.”

“He’s your best friend, you should be there for him.” 

His gaze narrows. “Yeah? What about you? Who should be here for you?” Stiles knows his voice is unreasonably challenging, but he wants to hear Derek say it. 

Derek coughs instead; Stiles can feel a new warmth as blood seeps into his shirt. “I would never expect anyone to stay behind for me.”

“Well maybe you should,” Stiles snaps, and he doesn’t mean to be so angry, doesn’t want to yell at Derek in his final moments, but he  _ is _ angry. He’s  _ so damn angry _ . He doesn’t know why he never thinks of Derek as mortal, why he never thinks that Derek might one day not get back up from the fight, but he doesn’t. Derek has always gotten back up. He’s survived everything that’s been thrown his way, and Stiles has always expected that he always will.

Today, apparently, is one day.

“I don’t  _ want _ you to,” Derek snaps back, coughing again, and a rush of cold, debilitating fear courses through Stiles when the blood gushes against his side this time. Derek pulls back, his mouth and chin wet with blood, and Stiles can’t breathe. “Don’t you get it, Stiles? Protecting you, all of you, is more important to me than surviving. I take this shit on to keep all of you safe.”

Stiles closes his eyes, takes a shaky breath. “Don’t  _ you _ get it, Der? I can’t stand by and watch you get hurt without doing everything I can to stop it.”

Derek’s eyes soften, despite the evidence of agony in them, and he grips Stiles’ hand a little tighter. “I know, Stiles. But if it means my life for yours, that’s a trade I’ll always make.”

The ache in his chest multiplies, and it burns like fire as he struggles to inhale, his vision growing gray and fuzzy at the edges. “Derek, man, you can’t leave me, okay? You gotta stay with me,” he gasps, and Derek gives him a regretful quirk of a smile. 

“I wish I could,” he admits, his voice raspy, and Stiles can’t take it, can’t take the fact that Derek is slipping away from him with every breath. “I wish I’d been braver.”

Tears prick at his eyelids and he tries to will them away. “You’re the bravest man I’ve ever met. Also the stupidest, most reckless asshole and I kind of hate you for it.”

A broken chuckle breaks loose from his chest and Stiles freezes, afraid it will trigger another coughing attack from which Derek won’t recover. “I think you’re the stupidly reckless one,” he disagrees, but there’s affection in his tone, and Stiles clings to it at the same time he tries to shut it out. This isn’t the way he wanted this to go. “And you know what I mean, Stiles,” he continues, and the raw honesty in his voice scares Stiles almost as much as what’s happening in front of him. They’ve danced around this for so long, because there was always something else to deal with, another crisis to face, another monster to defeat. Stiles kept telling himself there would be time, he was only in high school, there was no point in facing it head-on right now. He presumed Derek had done the same.

But now time has run out. He’ll graduate high school, but Derek won’t be there to see it.

Head-on it is.

“I know,” Stiles confesses lowly, the words sticking in his throat. “I know, Derek. I wish I’d been braver, too.”

Derek’s hand clasps his again, but the grip is weaker this time and he looks so tired. His already pale complexion has grown ashen, and his eyes drift shut. “I’m sorry, Stiles,” he breathes, and tears slide down Stiles’ cheeks, slipping along the curve of his nose, wetting his lips before dripping off his chin. He doesn’t bother wiping them away because they’ll just be followed by more, and more, and more. 

He doesn’t say the words that sit on his tongue, because Derek’s beyond hearing them.

\-----

When Derek’s body shifts, Stiles feels like he should be surprised. Somewhere, in a disconnected part of his brain, he attributes his lack of a reaction to the numbness which set in not long after he realized Derek had stopped breathing. It’s more surprising that he didn’t have a panic attack, but he supposes there’s only so much his body can handle before shutting down.

Regardless, when he feels the soft cotton beneath his cheek morph into fur that tickles his skin, Stiles’ brain sluggishly flashes back to seeing Laura Hale’s body, wolfed out and cut in two. He wonders idly if it’s a Hale thing, or a full-shift thing. He doesn’t want to let go, and in fact finds it nearly impossible to unlock his arms from around the wolf, but he manages to reluctantly pull back.

The wolf is black, inky and velvet like the night sky above, and Stiles strokes his fur over and over again. He watches his hand trail over the wolf’s side, his flank, his belly, and he plays with the thick fur at the tip of his tail, all while fighting through a haze of disconnect. Something in the back of his brain tells him he should go, Derek doesn’t need him anymore and Scott still does, but the very idea of it strips the oxygen from his lungs until he has to drop his head between his knees and suck in gasping gulps of air. 

He sits there, for how long he doesn’t know, until he goes from utter silence to words spilling out of his mouth like a verbal waterfall. “I’m so fucking angry at you right now. You were supposed to be there to see me graduate, and to drive me to college, and to come see me on the weekends. I was gonna text the shit out of you, every time I saw something that reminded me of you or that I thought you would like, and you would pretend to be annoyed that I was blowing up your phone, but in reality you’d be smiling at it every time a message came in. And you’d give me a cheesy ringtone like ‘Right Here Waiting’ or something.

And, y’know, after I graduated we’d have to figure out where we were going to live, if I was going to come back home to Beacon Hills or go off and join the police department in Chicago or Miami or somewhere, and if you were going to come with me, and obviously you’d come with me because by that point you’d be so fucking in love with me that the idea of not being with me would be the craziest thing you could ever imagine. So we’d go to Chicago or Miami or back to Beacon Hills, and you’d be the guy volunteering to coach Little League, and after I’d spent a couple years as a rookie, you’d tell me you really wanted to consider adopting.”

The wolf remains still beside him, not like Stiles expected anything different, but the fact that he’s all but yelling into the void makes him even angrier. He didn’t even know he had these thoughts in his head until they all started pouring out, and now he’s deeply feeling the loss of this imaginary future. He knows it’s irrational to blame Derek, but he’s hurting and Derek is a convenient target.

“So then we’d have adopted a couple kids, three or four maybe, and you’d be the biggest PTA dad to ever PTA. You’d bake cookies for bake sales and volunteer in the kids’ classrooms, and you’d chaperone field trips. The kids would pretend to be mortified but they’d secretly love it, and their friends would tell them they had the best dad, and they’d say, ‘I know, right?’ Because you would be the best dad. 

And we would have loved them so fucking much, but you fucking ruined it, because you had to go and fucking  _ die _ and now we won’t get to have that, ever! I won’t get to call you at two am, drunk out of my mind and missing you so much that I didn’t care if I woke you up, I just had to talk to you. I won’t get to see that incredibly rare smile light up your stupidly beautiful face whenever I come home on break and we see each other for the first time in weeks, or months. I won’t get to ask you to do all of the things I wanted for us, even if I never really let myself hope for it, or think about it. I won’t get to have the happily-ever-after with you.”

Hopelessness surges through him, swirling in with the grief and churning in his stomach, but he barrels on. Despite the fact that Derek can’t hear his rampage, Stiles can’t stop the words as his final, biggest fear crystallizes. He’s nearly shaking, clutching at the wolf’s pelt and trying to will back the tears that have begun dripping down his chin.

“I don’t even know if I’ll ever get to have a relationship without thinking, ‘What if? What if Derek had lived? What if I’d been with him instead? What if this person is only second best?’ And it’s all because you had to throw yourself into the middle of danger, the way you always did, and it cost us  _ everything _ !”

He’s sobbing by the final words, chest heaving, and the soul-wrenching emptiness is terrifying. Stiles hasn’t felt this way since the aftermath of the Nogitsune; it’s a feeling he’d prayed fervently to never have to experience again. He should have known that his life didn’t allow for improvement or, God forbid, happiness. 

A sick feeling rises up in him and he hauls himself to his feet, stumbling away so he can vomit away from Derek’s body. He’s on his knees for a few minutes, retching until his stomach is painfully empty, and then he stays there while his shoulders shake and his breathing evens out. Once he feels like he can breathe steadily, he lifts one hand and wipes the back of it across his mouth. When he’s calm again, he turns to go back. 

Derek’s body is gone.

\-----

If asked, Stiles wouldn’t be able to say what happened between the moment he realized Derek’s body had disappeared, and when he pulled into the driveway in front of his garage. The time evaporates like mist at sunrise until he finds himself staring at his front door, shaking in the driver's seat, his fingers white from gripping the steering wheel. The entire drive from Mexico was a blur. He vaguely recalls Braeden threatening him, until Kira of all people demanded she back off. 

He doesn't remember what anyone said, or did. He doesn't even know if anyone actually said or did anything at all. He remembers Scott and Kira in the back seat, Liam in the front next to him. He was in no shape to drive, but neither was Scott, and Kira wouldn't leave his side. So Stiles pulled himself into the front seat and pointed them in the direction of home. 

It doesn't feel like home, though. Derek is gone, and everywhere he goes he's reminded of that fact. It feels like being cruelly mocked. Derek's gone, and Stiles thought there would always be time, but there wasn't, and he doesn't know how to make it stop hurting. 

It's been almost a week since their return and Stiles still can't shake off the unsettled feeling crawling through his skin. Something is off, wrong, and he can't pinpoint it, but he also doesn't care enough to try. 

He finds himself at the loft, and it burns his eyes to see it, until he realizes the burning is tears, and that's also why his vision is blurry. 

The loft looks unchanged, but now it has an almost ethereal quality, like it’s frozen in time. Stiles thinks briefly of that one episode of Angel, and even though that guy was a total idiot, Stiles understands why he was so desperate to hang on to one moment of happiness. If Stiles had the opportunity to go back and freeze time in order to avoid losing Derek, he’s not sure he’d be able to say no.

There’s still a coffee mug sitting on the counter, left in their haste. Stiles feels guilty, unreasonably so, because Derek had shot him a baleful stare when he’d plunked the mug down on the granite top. 

_ “You couldn’t have put it in the dishwasher? Or the sink?” _

_ Stiles had given him a cheeky grin. “They’re on the other side of the kitchen. It would have required more effort.” _

_ Derek rolled his eyes. “You’re not that helpless.” _

_ “Yeah, but we’re about to go into a fight for which we’re woefully underprepared, which is of course the story of our lives. I need to conserve my energy.” _

_ Derek had shaken his head, then turned and stripped off his shirt; Stiles’ throat went dry, his heart thudding. He’d watched as Derek pulled on a different shirt, smirking at Stiles as he did so, and Stiles resolutely ignored it while he tried to find his voice. _

_ “What, is your day not complete unless you’ve taken off your shirt in public?” he snarks, but the faintness of the words lessens the sting of their impact. _

_ “We’re not in public,” Derek points out, shrugging. “Besides, it’s my favorite. I don’t want it getting shredded or covered in blood.” _

He’d thrown the shirt over the back of the couch, where it still remains. Stiles runs his fingertips over it now, the material soft and cool under his skin. Tentatively, he lifts the medium-weight charcoal colored sweater to his face, nuzzling his nose into the fabric, and inhales the warm, spicy scent of Derek.

Grief tears at him. He fists the sweater, his fingers clenching around the collar as he fights down the misery crawling up his throat, threatening to strangle him. Dropping down onto the couch, he rolls over until his face presses into the back cushion, curling up into a ball. He wraps his arm around his stomach, chin digging into his chest, and allows the tears to flow down his face in a hot, choking rush.

\-----

It becomes habit, going to the loft every day after school. He’s found himself pulling away from the pack; without Derek, and with Scott focusing on Kira and Liam in the aftermath of his Berserker transformation, Stiles feels less and less like he’s even a part of it.

Sometimes he does his homework at the loft, sometimes he watches TV, sometimes he reads through the Bestiary. Sometimes he naps. Sometimes he just sits, and remembers.

His eighteenth birthday is less than a month after Mexico, and he’s nowhere near the frame of mind necessary to celebrate. He’s always thought it would be the best birthday ever; he’d finally be an adult, only a couple short months from graduation and freedom. The world would finally be his oyster and all that.

Right now, the world feels like his prison.

His dad greets him when he comes downstairs that morning, giving him a warm hug and a plate stacked high with pancakes and syrup. Stiles picks at them, taking actual bites only when his dad is actually looking at him, then swallowing them down past the aching lump in his throat that seems to have taken up permanent residence.

“Do you have any plans for today?” he asks, and Stiles gives him a bright, false smile.

“Scotty and I are going out after school,” he lies. “Maybe dinner and catching a movie with Kira and Lydia.”

Relief crosses his dad’s face, and Stiles doesn’t know if he feels bad about deceiving him, or relief of his own that he’s managed to assuage his father’s concerns despite all evidence that he’s spiralling. 

He gets through the day by keeping his head down and his mouth shut. No one seems to notice; Scott barely even acknowledges him and doesn’t even mention his birthday. The only one who calls him out on it is Finstock. 

“Bilinski, you sick or something?” he barks during Economics, and Stiles forces a wide smile onto his face. That seems to be the theme of the day. 

“Nah, Coach. I just want to make sure I don’t miss a single, fascinating word of your lecture,” he replies innocently.

Finstock makes a face. “Oh, shut up.”

It makes him laugh, a genuine one, for the first time in almost a month.

\-----

After school, he makes his way to the loft. It’s the only place he wants to be.

When he slides the door open and steps inside, his heart jolts, his breath freezing in his lungs. “Derek?”

The wolf--literally--lies curled up on the couch, his snout buried in the gray sweater Stiles has taken to wearing. His chest rises and falls steadily, and it takes Stiles a few seconds to work through his shock and realize that he’s sleeping, his tail twitching lightly.

Stiles isn’t sure if he should approach the sleeping wolf, if he should leave, or if he should finally go see the therapist his dad has recommended more than once, because clearly his brain is just done and has resorted to making things up to make him happy again.

He lets his eyes skim the wolf, and with every sweep his heart pounds harder. It’s not possible, Derek is dead, he watched him die, he sat beside his body-but this is  _ Derek _ . The fur is the same inky black, the snout has a few gray hairs peppered throughout, the paws are larger than Stiles’ head, the eyes are that vivid, glowing blue-

His eyes are open. He’s awake.

Stiles wants to breathe,  _ needs _ to breathe, but he can’t, his lungs aren’t working, and he has to clutch the doorframe to keep from dropping to his knees. The wolf whines at him, pulling his head free from the fabric of the sweater, and drops to the floor, padding over toward Stiles. Stiles can’t take his eyes off the sleek form approaching him, and little noises of grief bubble up from his throat.

“Derek? Please tell me it’s you.”

The wolf stops a few feet from him, cocks his head quizzically, and lets out a short, sharp bark, accompanied by another flash of glowing blue eyes. Before Stiles even knows what he’s doing he’s on his knees, arms wrapped around the wolf’s neck, and breathing heavily into the top of his head. “I thought you were dead. You  _ were _ dead. How are you here? What happened? Why were you gone so long?”

He’s babbling, he knows, but the shock is too much and he doesn’t know how to keep his mouth under his own control at the best of times anyway.

Minutes pass as he sits there, clutching at the wolf, breathing him in, knees aching, back protesting, and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t know how this is possible, but he doesn’t want to question it. A tear drips down his nose and onto the wolf’s muzzle, and then Stiles feels the wolf shifting underneath him. 

He’s too stunned to see Derek alive, sitting right beside him, studying him, to even think about the fact that he’s naked. Much. 

“I wasn’t dead."

Stiles scoffs. “I beg to differ. I was sitting right beside you when you stopped breathing, and when your eyes went sightless.” The memories of losing Derek roll through them and he trembles, breathing through his nose to remind himself that Derek is here, Derek is alive. “I sat there for like an hour and your body didn’t so much as twitch. Well, after you shifted into the wolf, anyway. Until I puked up my guts, and then you just fucking disappeared. Thanks for that trauma, by the way. On top of many others.”

Derek remain motionless as Stiles rambles at him. He doesn’t even move to cover himself, which a distant part of Stiles’ brain finds incredibly strange and not-Derek-like, but he’s not going to complain. Instead, he watches Stiles quietly, like he’s trying to figure out how to address what Stiles has said. “I was evolving. From what I understand, my human form had to die before the wolf could be reborn.”

“Okay, yeah, that sounds like a load of horseshit,” he snorts, pulling himself to his feet. He has to move, so he begins pacing back and forth, making a loop through the kitchen, to the living room, and back to the front door, all while Derek sits in silence, looking at him in apparent amusement if the expression on his face is anything to go by. “So you had to die in order to get your whole full-wolfy mojo going. How exactly does that translate to you disappearing for three and a half weeks? How come you’re back now? Why didn’t you just stay away?” The question comes out rather bitter, and Stiles doesn’t know why. He should be happy that Derek is alive and back and with him, but he just feels betrayed.

“I couldn’t control the shift at first,” he begins, and Stiles plops down on the couch, staring. “I’d shift back and forth and wouldn’t have any idea where I was or even who I was. I found an alpha with experience fully shifting, but it took a couple weeks before I had it under control and could do it by choice. I didn’t want to come back before I did.”

“Why  _ did _ you come back?” He whispers it, because he’s afraid of the answer, and hopeful for it at the same time.

Sighing heavily, Derek lifts himself off the floor. Stiles averts his eyes while Derek reaches out and pulls on a pair of sweats, as well as the gray sweater his wolf was curling up with when Stiles arrived. 

When he’s dressed, Derek sits down beside Stiles and leans into the back of the couch. “You know why, Stiles,” he answers, finally. “I couldn’t stay away.”

Stiles lifts his eyes, swallowing down the butterflies that are climbing up his throat, and meets Derek’s gaze head-on. “You came back for me.” Derek nods, and like a marionette with its strings cut, Stiles collapses. “Why?”

“Why do you think?” 

“You can’t keep putting this on me to give all the answers you’re too afraid to say,” Stiles points out, but his voice isn’t as harsh as his words. 

Derek nods again, and Stiles waits. “I’ve known for a long time, how I feel,” he begins, and the words come slowly, like he doesn’t know how to say them. Knowing Derek, he probably doesn’t. “But you were so young. I couldn’t… I couldn’t be like Kate.”

“Whoa. No. Hold up, okay? You are not her. You’ll never be her. I know you, and you’re the furthest thing possible from someone who would prey on someone younger for your own gain.”

It's subtle, but Stiles detects Derek's flinch. “Isaac, Erica, and Boyd might disagree with you. If they were still here.”

“Fuck that,” Stiles says impatiently. “You didn't prey on them, you offered them a better life. Or you tried to, anyway. You could have picked anyone you wanted as your betas. You could have picked adults, people who were older and stronger and more like you. But you picked kids who had it rough and needed the wolf. You were offering them something better than what they had, and even if not everyone around here recognizes that, I do.”

Derek's lip quirks. “You know you're always the first to defend me.”

“It's because I love you, damn it.” They both still. “I probably should not have said that.”

This time it's a full smile that blooms. “It’s okay, Stiles. I love you too. When I said I knew how I felt, it wasn't just that I care about you. I've loved you for a long time.”

“How long?” Stiles challenges him, and a somber look replaces the smile. 

“Since the Nogitsune.” Stiles blinks, and he can feel the way he draws in on himself, just barely. “The thought that Argent, or anyone else, might take you down… I couldn't let that happen. Killing the threat was always my go-to answer, but when it came to you it wasn't even an option.”

“I had no idea.” The words are soft, pained, and Derek sighs.

“It’s not like I could tell you,” he points out ruefully. “You were the seventeen year old son of the town sheriff. Even if it wasn’t the same situation as me and Kate, it was still illegal.” Taking a deep breath, he curves his fingers around Stiles’, twining them together. “But it didn’t matter, not really. I still loved you. I wanted everything for you, and I wanted to protect you from the hell this town unleashes. When I thought I was going to lose you to the Nogitsune, one way or another, it terrified me.”

Stiles’ lips part, his breathing hitches. “Those are pretty strong words coming from someone who rarely does more than growl.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “Smartass.” They fall quiet until Derek continues. “I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved, Stiles. Everyone who mattered to me even a little bit. Cora and Isaac might still be alive, but I’ve lost them all the same. You’re the only one I have left. The only good thing left in my life. When I was faced with the idea of losing you, no, terrified isn’t too strong of a word.”

Throat working hard against tears, Stiles leans into Derek’s shoulder. “So you know how it felt for me to lose you.”

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, turning his lips into the top of Stiles’ head, brushing a light kiss over the thick strands. “I never meant to do that to you. That’s why I kept trying so hard to send you away, I didn’t want you to watch me die. I didn’t want that to be your last memory of me.”

“Do you really think I could have been anywhere else?” Stiles murmurs into Derek’s throat. He’s trying desperately not to cry, but the memories of that day threaten to wash over him. He’s lived with that misery for a month, and the brief moment of forgetting it when he found Derek alive has already faded. His chest aches with the residual effects of such soul-wrenching grief. “I would never have left you.”

Derek’s fingers skim rhythmically back and forth over Stiles’ arm. “Do you know the reason why I was so afraid of becoming fully human?” he asks, and while it sounds like a rhetorical question, Stiles knows it’s not.

“Because being a werewolf is the only thing you’ve ever known?” he surmises. “I mean, you were born to it. It had to have been horrifying to have that stripped away from you.”

“It was,” Derek acknowledges, “but it wasn’t the only thing. I was afraid that if I was a human, I wouldn’t be able to protect you. That you’d end up dying and there would be nothing I could to save you.”

“That’s exactly what I had to live through. I didn't even know I loved you until you were dying in front of me and I couldn't leave you even to save my best friend,” Stiles confesses lowly. “I was scared as shit, knowing you were going to die and I couldn't stop it and it was too late to do anything about us.”

Derek opens his arms, a little hesitant and a little awkward, but Stiles falls into them anyway. “I don’t know what to do about you. We’re far past plausible deniability and keeping our feelings to ourselves, but you're still so young,” he murmurs, his breath ruffling Stiles’ hair.

“Hey buddy, I'll have you know I'm eighteen as of midnight last night,” Stiles informs him, and though the words are spoken into Derek's chest, Stiles knows he hears them. “I may be young, but I'm legal. And I've gone through shit people twice my age could never imagine. I think that ups my emotional age.”

“I'll accept that,” Derek concedes, and Stiles can't see it, but he can feel the smile against his temple, and hear it in his voice. “So I guess we’re doing this, then?”

Stiles pulls back just enough to be able to see Derek’s face, giving him an exaggerated wink. “If by ‘this’ you mean ‘me’, then yes, absolutely,” he replies breezily, and Derek snorts. “Remember, legal.”

“There’s no rush,” Derek points out. “We don’t have to jump into anything.”

Stiles pouts. “It’s my birthday.”

“You’re not getting sex for your birthday.”

“Birthday blowjob?” Stiles suggests hopefully. 

Derek rolls his eyes. “I’ll consider it. But for now...” He grins slyly, gripping the front of Stiles' shirt and tugging him closer. Stiles barely has time to close his eyes before Derek's mouth is on his, and he sinks into it, reveling in the tenderness behind the gentle press of lips. Before he can deepen it, Derek pulls back and smiles at him softly. "I've been wanting to do that for a long time." 

"Hey, I'm not complaining. You can lay one on me any time." Stiles' grin is cheeky and Derek heaves a clearly-fake exasperated sigh before sliding his arm around Stiles and pulling him in tight.

Stiles rolls with it, snuggling deeper into Derek’s side, reveling in the warmth of Derek’s arm around him and the feel of his chest rising and falling. He knows he can’t complain even if all he and Derek do is sit on the couch and cuddle and watch movies, because Derek’s already given him more than he ever could have hoped for. Derek’s given him happiness, and love, and hope that tomorrow will be better.

All in all, past Stiles was completely right. Eighteen is going to be the best year yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yammer at me on [Tumblr](http://cobrilee.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
